This is a snail trap that doesnâ€™t work on a one-way gate or 'lobster pot' style of entrapment, says Nathan Hill - it requires the aquarist to literally fish for his or her snails.

The footprint of this trap is a couple of inches across and resembles a UFO, which I guess for snails it is.

You bait the trap with a little dried food in the centre tube, tucked safely behind tiny fissures so that the snails (and fish) can’t actually reach it, and then you lower it to the base of the tank, and sit and wait. Once you have a few customers inside it, you can lift them out, flush them off and start again.

Unlike some designs, this one actually cannot trap small fish, but if you try to just leave it overnight, the snails can come and go as they please. Without the aquarist periodically plucking the thing out when it’s sagging with passengers, it won’t do much.

If you’ve got clumsy hands then you’ll swear like a trooper trying to thread the thin wire included in the package, but once it’s on, it’s on. The wire’s about a metre long, so as long as your tank isn’t any deeper than that, it’ll work. If you’ve got any sense, you might even tie the free end to a fishing float while it’s in the tank, to save you trying to work out where the line’s gone if you drop it.

Bait is included, and seeing as the trap isn’t designed to be used overnight, there should be little issue with it decomposing. Once you’ve run out, you could always just try some sinking pellets in it for the same effect.

Verdict

If you don’t mind lifting the thing up and down, like some snail bathysphere every few hours, then you’ll love it. If you do, then you’ll hate it.

Ultimately, it removes snails as it says it will, and it doesn’t trap fish. And that’s what snail traps are all about.